Month: October 2023

Creating a comic of my literary narrative essay has helped me meet the learning outcomes of practicing writing as a process by implementing the strategies of research, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection. Not only did I have to make multiple drafts and revisions, but the brain power it took to turn pure prose into words and pictures was a challenge of its own. In essay form, I focused my idea on being chronological so it could be easier to adapt to a comic later. I talk about my struggle with incorporating metaphors and analogies. Ironically, when it was time to make the comic version of my idea, creative writing was required to shorten my sentences and fit all my ideas into a handful of panels.

One challenge I faced was making each page have different panels. Variety is key in showcasing my ideas, thoughts, and if I am to be so bold, talents. Once the visual component was added I was forced to think of how my words would fit on a page in space. Also, my first designs and drawings were not always the best, and many revisions were needed to put the idea I had fostered in my head, to paper. 

Writing comics and essays involves distinct thinking processes. When I was crafting my comic, I had to mix words to tell a story. To use a metaphor, it is like a team sport, and I have got to be super clear and to the point in my drafts. There is not much space on the page compared to an essay which one can keep writing on, and on, and on, so brevity is key. When writing the essay beforehand, I tried to dive deep into arguments and evidence, focusing on structure and detail. While they both need analytical thinking, comics are like the fun, creative cousins of serious, scholarly essays.

No comic is complete without an ending, and since I struggled with the writing beforehand, I was very concerned with how my comic would end up. After lots of thought, I decided to go with a slightly open-ended finish. I reflected on the texts we had read in class and why I liked some more than others (I am a fan of “It’s Lonely at the Center of the Earth” and not so much the ending of “Spinning”). Since my essay did not have an ending worth illustrating and lacked the “ABT” form, it was a challenge to create something I felt comfortable with to end my comic. I decided to use inspiration from the page I traced in “Stitches”. I took the panel when David was in the air above the wave and transformed it with a positive lens. For my last panel, I drew myself in the same spiraling way that David was and wrote: “When I got that first email… I thought I could fly”. I was reflecting on the emotion of getting my first college acceptance letter in a way that was not literal and was based upon material we had read in class.

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It was different writing my literacy narrative as a comic because I had to use significantly less text, and come up with images to match my writing. It was challenging to decide which key components I should take from my narrative and include as text. With the addition of the visual component, I had to think about how to transform my words into images. I decided early on that I wanted to use photos instead of drawing, which in a way made things a lot more difficult because I had to search for photos that could tell my story. I had to be creative at some points of the story, especially towards the end because I didn’t have many photos that I felt could tell the story of my breakup as well as tutoring my brothers. The visual component helped me piece together the story and have a better overall flow. My thinking process when creating the comic was definitely different from when I was writing the narrative. I found it easier to write the narrative as opposed to creating the comic, due to the fact that the comic had a lot more moving parts that I had to think through. I struggled with figuring out how to include any dialogue in my comic while telling my story. I also felt as though I included too much text at times, and could have done better with telling my story through more visual components. The main changes I made from my storyboard to my final draft included adding more visual components to add more creativity and better flow to the story. I felt as though my visual components were best on the first page, due to the fact that my mom was able to take pictures of the books I created when I was younger as well as my elementary school yearbook. I felt as though these photos were crucial for my story, because the books I couldn’t describe as well with words. I also felt that the progression of my age in the photos helped with the flow of the story; you could see me age across the panels. I tried to use colors in order to set the mood for my story. The first page depicting my childhood, I made an effort to use vibrant colors, while on the second page, I tried to use black, white, and grey tones as much as possible in order to depict a low point in my adolescence. The revival of colors on the third page is supposed to symbolize the way writing helped me push through the low points and process my negative emotions. In my final draft I added little emojis in order to add some humor to a relatively depressing slide. This was in order to show that with reflection, this “low point” wasn’t as dark as it really felt at the time. Overall I thought that the process of changing my literacy narrative into a comic made the flow a lot better, and provided a visual representation of my story.

After crafting my final comic, I’ve learned a lot about myself as a writer, artist, and communicator. Based on the learning outcomes for this course, I feel like I have already demonstrated all five of the end-of-semester targets.

The Sunday sketch assignments have prepared me well to take on this bigger drawing project, and I utilized both visual and writing modes to compose a text of a narrative genre. By creating my literacy comic, I have met the learning outcome of being able to “compose texts in multiple genres, using multiple modes.”

Before we had to construct our own comic, we read various texts including Stitches, Spinning, and It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth. From engaging in meaningful class discussions to analyzing and evaluating the material on my own time, I feel like I definitely have been able to “undertake scholarly inquiry” of the ideas of others in order to brainstorm my own arguments that I wrote about in my literacy narrative. The comics that we have read so far have been non-fiction memoirs recounting the author’s own personal childhood experiences, which directly relates to the assignment we had to do. I analyzed and assessed how the authors like David Small and Tillie Walden approached presenting their childhood experiences and then I tried to apply that strategy to my own literacy narrative comic.

Producing this literacy narrative allowed me to view writing as a process of research, drafting, and reflection. However, I feel like I did not really meet the learning outcome of revising or editing my writing. I stuck with my first draft because I felt like the quality of it was okay to move forward with the illustration process, but I feel like I could’ve challenged myself to reconstruct my essay as a whole, even if that meant the drawing portion of the narrative might be more difficult to effectively communicate and reflect the writing. If I could go back and restart the process of constructing the literacy narrative comic, I would be more bold in editing my initial writing.

An aspect of this assignment that I really liked was getting into groups and discussing my peers’ comic drafts that they created. I enjoyed not only understanding their experience with reading and writing, but also seeing their artistic process in being able to communicate those ideas. I was only able to view a couple of my classmate’s works, but I think it would be very interesting to meet with the entirety of the class to collaborate and share feedback too. 

Lastly, I definitely used technology appropriately while making my comic. I chose to produce the illustrations using a digital medium, Procreate, and it was very exciting to explore my artistic style by having access to different colors, brush strokes, and paint textures. 

For my comic, I decided to visually communicate my writing by mostly indirectly illustrating key points in the narrative. For example, if I wrote that I was ready to take on sixth grade English, I would draw myself as a superhero on a building of books, or if I wrote that it felt like all my English class lessons were just a constant repeat of “claim, evidence, reasoning”, I would draw a track to convey the feeling of boredom and repetition. I found that using symbolism to express my ideas allowed me to use less panels. If I had more time, I definitely would want to use more 3d forms instead of having a doodle-like quality to my comic, and I would play around with color and different media like Zoe Thorogood’s comic, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth. I would also make my comic a lot longer, it feels really condensed that I feel like it misses a huge chunk of emotion and a sense of flow. 

Overall, I had so much fun with this assignment. Combining both art and writing to communicate something meaningful to me has helped me really understand and deconstruct my journey and relationship with reading and writing. I am excited to use what I’ve learned from this project and class readings to hopefully produce and execute something of higher quality!

You can view my literacy comic here.